When working with lumber or plywood or other man-made sheet materials, there is frequently a need to provide auxiliary support for those materials, particularly when using fixed tools such as table saws, router tables, thickness planers, and jointers. In these situations it is necessary to have the work-piece supported at both ends, both to insure an accurate cut and for safety reasons. Typically, the user is feeding the material into the tool, so the in-feed side of the material is supported by the tool user. Some sort of support is often required for the out-feed side of the machine. Furthermore auxiliary in-feed support is also sometimes needed, such as when extremely long stock is being machined.
This support needs to meet several requirements.    1. It must be strong enough to support the weight of the material.    2. It must be stable enough that the moving material cannot move it or tip it over, particularly when the material first contacts the support.    3. It must be adjustable so that the work-piece-contacting portions of the support can be made level and in line with the work-piece supporting structure of the machine.    4. It must offer low resistance to the moving material. This reduces the effort required by the operator and reduces the opportunity the material has for tipping the support over.    5. It must not impart any directional forces on the work-piece. Re-directing a work-piece while it is being machined can result, at best, in an inaccurate cut; at worst it can result in the tool binding and, work-piece kick-back with resulting damage to tool and injury to user.
Additional features are also desirable. For instance:    6. It is desirable for the support to be easily positioned and adjusted.    7. It is desirable for the support to be easy to store in a relatively small space.    8. It is desirable for the support to be configured so that the advancing end of a work-piece will successfully engage and be supported by the support even of the end of the work-piece is sagging when it encounters the support.
Numerous user-made and commercially manufactured supports are available. None include all of the features identified above.
For instance, a typical problem with existing out-feed supports is that it is difficult or impossible to get the support “head” exactly in line and level with the tool. This can be difficult for a number of reasons, including a shop floor for other support surface that is not level or a tool that is not set up perfectly level. Many existing out-feed supports provide for both height and angular adjustment of the head by providing a tube supporting the head that telescopes within a tube projecting from a base, or that is part of a base, and a thumb screw or male wing knob threaded through the base tube bears against the head support tube to lock it in position. The weight of the head tends to cause the head support tube to fall down into the base tube as soon as the thumb screw is loosened, and correct adjustment is very difficult because the weight of the head has to be supported with one hand while its height and angle are adjusted very accurately and the thumb screw is tightened. This needs to be accomplished without affecting head height or angular position, but the act of tightening the thumb screw often moves the position of the head as the screw acts on the support tube. Often this head positioning operation needs to be done while a work-piece is also being supported by the head and the machine with which the out-feed roller support is being used in order to establish the height at which the head needs to be positioned.
Out-feed stands or supports must have some sort of head that allows the work-piece to slide over it with very minimal resistance. There are two reasons for this. First, if there is high resistance to the material movement, the stand may simply be knocked over. Secondly, high resistance increases the force a user must apply to move the work-piece. This is undesirable from the point of view of fatigue, but, more importantly, it is also a safety issue. A slip while a user is applying force toward the tool blade or cutter can lead to operator contact with the blade and serious injuries. Typical existing roller stands generally incorporate either a single long roller, or a series of ball rollers for contact with the work-piece being supported. Each approach is less than ideal. A single long roller sufficiently distributes the load of the work-piece to prevent damage; however, unless this roller is carefully aligned with the machine, so that the roller axis of rotation is parallel to the machine work surface and perpendicular to the direction of travel of the work-piece, the roller will tend to guide the work-piece out of line rather than along its intended direction of travel. Multiple ball rollers do not need to be precisely aligned due to their multidirectional nature, however the point contact with the work-piece can lead to damage of the work-piece surface because the entire weight of the work-piece being supported by the support stand bears on the very small areas of contact with the balls.
A support stand head needs to be level with the work surface of the machine with which it is being used. This is perhaps more critical than getting the stand at the same height, since the work-piece will be guided out of line if the out-feed head is not level with the tool.
Some out-feed stands address this issue by supplying adjustable feet to the stand. Alternatively, the angle of the head may be adjusted in prior art stands having masts that tilt relative to the floor by rotating the mast on which the head rests. Adjustment in this manner is very difficult because, among other reasons, it is difficult simultaneously to adjust the angle of the head and the projection of the mast from such prior art stands.
The height and angle adjustment mechanisms of prior art stands often require substantial “trial and error” to correctly adjust the stand, and the time required to get it right often encourage use with less than optimal positioning.
For the reasons described above, among others, none of the prior art support stands address all of the needs of such a stand.